This will be the last audio episode of this project! The remaining 2 ‘chapter’s I decided to write instead of record. This was one I most wanted to publish to feel completion, and I’ll share my final thoughts & takeaways in written posts that you can find on my Substack.

Also included in the Substack post for this episode are photos of the letter & poem my grandmother wrote, that I transcribed in the episode.

I want to thank you for listening and if this is the last time my words reach your ears or screen – I wish you a lot of love.

Riley

A funny thing tends to happen when I’m working on an episode. The themes I reflect on in the past, start to surface in the stories and conversations around me.

People close to me have been clearing their own space, ending relationships, committing to new changes and habits, moving, buying houses, hitting big life milestones.

Personally I took on a new side-job and moved to a new apartment in the heart of the city. And as the outward changes settle, I’ve been having fun thinking about what inward shifts have followed suit, and where I’ve been tempted to stay the same.

That said, here’s an episode that was a lot of fun to write & took a lot of help to get wrapped up. The interviews, the translation, the sound – not least of all the reminders from friends that they’ve been waaaaiiiting for the next one. Here it is!Much love, Riley

If you’re like me, you spend this holiday period oscillating between peak laziness and peak aspiration. I meticulously audit my spending of the previous year, categorizing every transaction …and cruise boxing day sales. I review a notion doc I set up to track my workouts…and submit myself to another night of charcuterie and sugar sweats. I reflect on all of the goals I set for 2023, the lessons I’ve learned…and those I didn’t. It’s a time I’m very privileged to experience as slow, full, and mindful (if not all due to overeating). But as exciting as I find it to dream up a new year of possibilities, it’s typically punctuated by things I didn’t do.

To me, this episode marks the end of things I didn’t say and highlights how something like learning to accept and love ourselves can be beautiful…and ugly…and worth celebrating all at the same time.

Happy holidays and thank you for listening.

Much love, Riley

I really enjoyed this episode, firstly because it features some of my favourite real life couples. And second, because the couple you’ll hear speaking in the latter half of the episode, recorded their thoughts entirely separate, without sharing any notes with each other. And yet, the way they reflected on their relationship individually was so complementary that I was able to create this back and forth which almost sounds like they’re in the same room. It obviously speaks to their foundational communication and connectedness, and then unrelated, as a creative challenge this was just fun to listen, find those themes and edit it together cohesively.

It also happened to be the most challenging audio-wise since I had the bright idea to instruct my guests to use Snapchat as their recording medium…we’ll file that under ‘practical lessons learned’.

Finally, if you enjoyed the wise words of my first featured soulmate, you can find more on her substack Oldest Daughter, her writing is as entrancing as her outlook on love.

Only 5 more to go until I wrap up this little experiment…thanks for reading and listening.Much love, Riley

In this episode I discover that the first time you need therapy, you’re often the last to know. I talk about what I learned about resourcing from my grade school self, and then share a few reflections on what ‘couple goals’ means today.

If you’re curious who made my list & what that exercise looks like scribbled in writing, you can ask me via email, I’m happy to share the artifact.

Resources I talked about:

* To be Magnetic: Unblocked Love workshop (I don’t think you’ll find the exact exercise I did, but it’ll get you there in other journal prompts & meditations)

* Somatic Therapy: if you’re interested in learning more, or wanting to be connected to someone like this let me know! I can share the name of mine.

Finally, I’m going to actually use that Instagram that I talk about in the end of the episode. It will just be a bit of a scrapbook of the experience, episodes and some links to the Instagram pages of people I regularly mention on the podcast.

That’s my weekend project, so soon you can visit @everything.butlove on Instagram and see some stuff there.

Much love,

Riley

If you believe in divine timing and signs from the universe, this episode might not reinforce that—but the creation of it will.

I struggled to write and revise this episode over the last month. First, because I was enjoying summer and other distractions, and second because I was having a hard time getting into a creative space.

And last weekend before going to a concert to celebrate a friends birthday, I was feeling guilty that I hadn’t finished this script yet. I had written something of an outline but I was planning a solo episode because I couldn’t find any friends’ clips or interviews that really spoke to what I was trying to discuss here.

So when I decided to give up and get ready for the concert, I resolved that I wouldn’t stay out too late or drink too much so I could really focus on writing/recording the next day. And as it happened, I caught up with my friend yelling over a non-alcoholic beer & Peach Pit, and what I heard was the perfect mirror to the story I was trying to write.

My friends need to be thankful I don’t do this for a living, because eventually I’ll need to stop saying, “oh my god, would you record what you just said and send it to me?? That was brilliant.” Right now I’m capitalizing on novelty and their good will.

Regardless, I’m so grateful to share this parallel storytelling experiment. It’s my favourite so far, and it’s probably the most honest I’ve managed to get as well—which is great because for what I have planned in the upcoming episodes …I’m going to need the confidence 😬

Let me know what you think by replying to this email, finding me on Instagram @ rileyroth__ or leave a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify if you’re feel like making it official 😉

As a special treat for being a subscriber, here’s a visual that Does prove I was thinking about this person fondly at the time. This photo is from one of our dates. It’s been saved in my favourites album, and truly is one of the favourite photos I’ve taken out here…and also my favourite date…maybe ever*.

The moon, the mountains, and the man

*after the episode you may not trust me when I make an assertion about my favourite anything 😂 that’s okay. What matters is how I feel in the moment I suppose. And it’s all fondness.

Much love,

Riley

This one comes after a few weeks of battling my inner brat, who didn’t want to write or edit a podcast – quite fitting.

Since the episode is a little extra info heavy, I’ll keep this short and just share some resources and one final thought.

One thought

What I wish someone told me about Inner Child work before I started:

* it’s really uncomfortable. What I didn’t share was the many times it got ugly. The times I have failed to set boundaries even when I knew I needed to. The times I’ve held my breath and braced myself through conversations with a parent, friend, or coworker.

* as uncomfortable as these moments will continue to be - they are nothing compared to how avoiding it eats away at me. Once you know there’s a way through, I think you loose your patience to limp the long way around.

* If I’m noticing the discomfort or the avoidance, it means I’m not numbing my feelings, and that’s the real achievement.

Much Love, Riley

Links:

* Inner Child Workshop: To Be Magnetic

* Blog article to read more from TBM: How to Identify Inner Child Wounds

* Nedra Glover Tawwab: Set Boundaries, Find Peace

Visiting the ghosts of relationships past with a flower remedy and a few first crush stories.

If you have any comments or would like to send a voice note of your own you can find me on Instagram @rileyroth__ or reply directly to this email. If you’re reading this in the podcast app show notes you can find me on Substack and sign up to receive an email with the full post when a new episode in this series is released.

The idea for this podcast series is layered. On the surface, yes, it’s about love & pursuit. But it’s also a way of expressing the cultural pressure I’ve felt to constantly treat myself as a work in progress. 

I imagine I’m not alone in this feeling, and I’ve also resigned to it never ending. But I’m growing more critical of my reasons for self-development and inner work, the end goals I actually have. Because as Mark Manson said in the Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, “The desire for a more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.” Which I take to mean, don’t do anything with the hope it will bring you a gift or some ultimate euphoria, or even love. You don’t get to choose the lesson from the journey. 

I see it also as an invitation to feel all the happiness and love and presence you want to right now. Your ideas are the only thing in the way. I definitely didn’t understand this at the time I’m talking about in this episode. I was still going to try and complete a workshop and seek the breakthrough for quite some time. 

But more and more now I’m trying to identify the really niche feelings and experiences that I think I’m really longing for, and try to recreate them. A small example is this feeling I remembered when I was a kid in elementary school, and it was the first day of summer. At the time I probably couldn’t even comprehend how much time 2 months was, so it felt like a lifetime was ahead of me to do Whatever I wanted. When I woke up and realized I had no school, homework, bedtime, bus to catch, just snacks and swimming…when is the last time you felt this way? I bet it wasn’t on your last two week vacation at work. No, we don’t allow ourselves to Actually relax and do nothing, we need to show something for our vacation! We need to go somewhere and Do something that’s worthy of working all those hours and saving up money. 

But the Feeling! The feeling that I can pinpoint. Of having the whole day/week/summer ahead with nothing to do, was the closest thing to freedom I’ve ever felt. Silly how we teach kids that doing their homework, getting good grades and a good job to buy a car and house etc will bring them this feeling again. Silly because we already had it. 

Part of this obviously entails having loving parents in a safe home who take care of all of your core needs- I recognize that itself is a luxury. But as we will talk about in the next episode, we’re a lot closer than we realize to the child we used to be and we’re a lot more equipped now to care for ourselves the way our best caretakers did. And why shouldn’t the reason for that maturity be to create that really beautiful safe space for us to wake up and feel like we have the freedom to do whatever we want? Even for just a day. 

I’ve tried this, and found a neat way to try and replicate this feeling. It’s weird but if you try nothing else from any of these exercises and journal prompts, please give this one a shot. 

Exercise: 

* Before you go to bed the night before you have a day off. Cancel all your plans if you can, take care of anything urgent, and decide that for the next day, you have no to-do list. This is harder than it sounds so you may have to try a few times. 

* Next, this is the important weird part, cover every clock and time face around you. I took sticky notes and hit the microwave, car, and even the top half of my phone and laptop. 

* Let whoever needs to know that you’ll be out of touch for a bit and go to sleep without an alarm and on airplane mode or do not disturb. 

* Wake up whenever you want. And do whatever you want….

Tips: don’t reach for your phone to give you any clues about what to do or who to answer to. This will be the hardest part. Because we have Habits! And habitually we look externally for our cues about what to spend time doing. Who needs me? What’s good on tik tok? Where did I leave off on this task? Not today. 

When I did this I sat uncomfortably looking at my phone for a bit. And then I thought about how I felt, what I needed, and then what I wanted to do. This was how my day played out:

First, I was hungry. So I cooked, and put on music (yes I managed this with the help of Siri since my phone navigation was stifled). Then I wanted to go outside, went to my favourite trail system and just walked, for how long – I have no idea! Came home, made more food, picked up a book, took a nap, went to the ocean, painted, and then once it was dark I made tea and put my favourite movie on. 

Why can’t you just do all these things and still have access to your phone and time?

Because the feeling of being a kid, is not keeping track of time. Because kids don’t look at the clock and say, “oh its 12 I need to eat lunch”, they say, “I’m hungry”. They don’t say, “oh it’s 9am I need to check to see if anyone has texted me overnight”, they say, “I want to go outside”.

Maybe I’m working hard to make money to get to a point I feel like I’m as free as that first day of summer. But the struggle to get “there” definitely isn’t making me feel free. And sure, it isn’t realistic to feel summer vacation free all day every day. But I’m starting to believe there’s a shorter distance between never feeling that way, and feeling it next weekend.

Much love, 

Riley 

Links:

* The ‘In Love’ remedy by Alexis Smart and the testimonials

* The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson

If this email is not making it to your primary inbox you can move it out of promotions and into your main inbox on gmail, or flag it in your email provider as not spam. Sometimes the best way to do this is respond to the email and say hi! 

I set my intention, learned what a ‘limiting belief’ was, found a key one of my own, and talked to friends about how and where we form our beliefs about love.

It’s been 2 weeks since I shared the pilot episode, and while there is no incentive for me to amass reader/listenership – I was pleasantly surprised with how many people tuned in. Thank you kindly for your attention and time, seriously, it’s a hot commodity.

After trashing the draft for this episode a few times, I realized knowing people were listening was adding a lil more pressure. I was nervous writing a follow up to that short punchy thing I was getting some positive validation for. Oh noooo.. I thought the jump was the hardest part! Nope time to swim!

Call it writer’s block or procrastination, but after a few days of that, I had to revisit the acceptance criteria I created for the project:

* Is it authentic?

* Can I be more honest?

* Am I poking fun at what needs to be poked?

* Is it good enough?

Yes to all = publish.

Good enough. That’s the last one for a reason. So many times we do great things or almost great things, and then we decide for everyone else that it isn’t good enough. Some smart people said variations of, ‘don’t let perfect be the enemy of good or done’, and I say to myself, ‘sup excuses 👀’.

To get to 12 episodes and a poetic bow on this ode to self-development and love, I have to publish episode 11, and to publish 11, I need to stop frigging around worrying about episode 2. Is that a swear? Do I need to mark my podcast as explicit?

Back to earth: Okay, I’ve decided it’s good enough. It’s the perfect honest beginning. A bit messy, naiive, and full of apprehension and assumptions. The best starts usually are, and there is nothing more satisfying than organizing chaos.

And after hearing the voices of everyone I included this week, it just filled me up, so time to share those beautiful souls.

Links! If I talked about some things, here they are:

* To Be Magnetic : I will speak highly but also critically about this throughout the series. The podcast is a good place to start if you’re curious, the EXPLAINED episodes, or this is probably a good one to start with: Ep. 159 Best in Class – Manifestation

Exercise:

In the episode I talked about the new years reflection exercise, it might be simple, or if you keep a journal like me may take some time. I write out each month of the year, and then flip through and remind myself about what I was doing/thinking/feeling, and force myself to keep it on 1 line.

I went back to look at the one I wrote around that time, and funny enough, this was one of the lines:

* June: vision creation, St. Thomas, podcast prophecy, portfolio procrastination

Catch you next week ✌️

«Warning» You’re about to scroll into the story behind the recipe, hopefully it’ll be more interesting, but no promises. Okay you’ve been warned, read on. «Warning»

The first. Nothing ever feels quite like it.

I love to write and I love to talk. But combine those things with procrastination/perfectionist tendencies…and you get a podcast I’ve been mulling over for a year.

It’s a bit self absorbed. To think that the first time you create something it’s worth micro-managing. I think that’s just a mixture of care & fear. We are so skilled at avoiding discomfort and afraid of feeling disappointment that something might not turn out how we wish…and we’ll string elaborate lies and negotiations about why it isn’t ready yet. Why we aren’t ready yet.

Thankfully, this idea got louder than my fear. It started to feel like something a little haunting or like something I needed to purge so I could get it out of my mind.

It’s my wish to provide some mild entertainment and storytelling, mixed with practical advice that I’ve actually tried.

Among the feelings I grappled with in releasing this first episode were:

* total panic: why am I doing this…lol…

* overwhelm: I can’t do this, my vision is grander than my skillset–abort!

* nausea: I’m staying up way too late watching Reaper tutorials on loudness calculations.

* total joy: seeing the design for the podcast cover & being so pleased with it (s/o Justine)

* excitement: listening to bits of recorded content and realizing I get to do something with this finally! Also hearing some audio magic tricks from a great sound editor helping me out (s/o Mihailo)

* acceptance: It’s happening now and I can’t stop it. Time to just share some of the beautiful moments I’ve collected, and have fun with the process.

For the first relevant exercise, I’ll share something dramatic that seems to work in pushing me over the growth edge and trying something scary.

Exercise:

A few years ago I was working on a UX design portfolio and felt so embarrassed by my skill level that I was procrastinating publishing it. It was during the pandemic so there was no rush to apply for work, and that was contributing even more to the perfection/procrastination trap.

I decided to write out & acknowledge every diminishing thought & clap back at myself as if I were my best friend. Examples:

* “Your work is not great– Who cares, do it anyways”

* “you’re too much of a beginner to get an entry level job–Fine, start by volunteering”

Somehow giving these little critical voices a space on the stage to be heard, was all I needed to clear them out of my mind.

I thought the same thing could help when trying to publish a podcast about my personal life. So I wrote out a list of every comment, thought, and person that I could imagine making me feel bad. I gave each one of them their time to share.

I know it sounds negative – but what it did for me, seeing these worries externalized and tangibly written, all of a sudden.. alone on paper, they were not scary at all. Examples:

* “X person sees your post and says, Wow another person with a podcast please no – Lol True, anotha one”

* “X person reads your newsletter and feels embarrassed for you, that you feel the need to do this – Fair, not your slugs not your bucket”

* “X person listens to 30 seconds of the podcast and turns it off, it’s just really bad and not worth the time – That’s the beauty of free will”

Okay. Am I dead yet? No? Damn, okay I guess I have to keep going.

Now if that seems really harsh, then write the opposite list out as well. All the great things you could imagine coming from this. These are my north star:

* the people who you talked to and recorded with, they love you and will be proud of anything you share. Because that’s the whole point.

* your friends and family may not all listen, but they will love and support you no matter what you decide to create. They’re just happy if you’re happy.

* the right people will respect your willingness to try something uncomfortable, and some people may even be inspired to try something new themselves.

* finally, you can make someone feel less alone in feelings and experiences that you’ve shared. The power of social media and online access to content, is exactly that. You get to share your voice, and that voice will meet the right person at the right moment just as your interviews and love notes reached you. Pass it forward.

That’s IT. IF you read this far, bravo, your attention span is beyond average & I hope you enjoyed the listen or read. Let me know, via email, instagram, postcard, I’m all yours.

Much love,

Riley